KERRE MCIVOR

KERRE’S ENDURANCE IS TESTED AS SHE PREPARES FOR ANOTHER HOLIDAY

Here we go again! It feels like I’ve only just unpacked my bag, after travelling to India and Myanmar last month, and now I’m off again. I feel very guilty about this trip. Last year, I made plans to take a marathon running tour to Buenos

Aires with my old coach and good mate, Gaz Brown.

It was to celebrate 10 years since the publication of our book, Short Fat Chick to Marathon Runner, and I had decided the South American city was a great place to run my last marathon.

It’s time to hang up my sneakers. Marathons are just too hard on old bodies and I don’t want the taxpayer to fund a hip operation that could be avoided. Half-marathons and 10km runs on the odd occasion, perhaps. But no more 42-kilometre slogs.

I have never visited Argentina, so the plan was that I would run the marathon and then Tom and I would tour around the country. Except, as so often happens, the best laid plans oft go awry. I have done next to no running this year and I have way too much respect for a marathon to attempt to run one without training. I have run a couple before with minimal training, but this year there’s been zip. Nada. None. I’ve been hopeless.

To be fair to my self, I couldn’t do a lot of running when I was staying in our French chateau for a month. We were out in the country and there were no safe verges to run along the side of the road. I could have run round and round the estate like a gerbil in a wheel – but I didn’t.

And then in India, I really couldn’t run. We were working, and up early, and getting back to our hotel late. It wasn’t advisable for women to run on their own around the streets either and besides, it was just too hot and humid to even think about moving faster than a languid stroll. I do realise I’m coming up with excuses and self-justifications. If I’d really wanted to run, I’d have found a way to do it. My mate, Mary Lambie, managed to train for the New York Marathon in a burqa in blistering heat in Iran for heaven’s sake, when she was there to film a television show.

If I’d summoned the will, I would have found a way. So I’ve accepted I won’t be running Buenos Aires. But then Tom said he couldn’t take the time off work to join me on a tiki tour, and, more crucially, he’d done some number crunching and felt we couldn’t really afford another holiday after our trip to France. He was quite happy for me to go but we couldn’t afford the time or the money for another big adventure. He’s quite right.

My first reaction was to blithely bung the holiday on the mortgage and insist that diems were there to be carpe-d. We could both be dead tomorrow. However, Tom is a more cautious soul and thank heavens for that. If we want holidays, we have to save and budget for them, and there’s a bit of the Puritan in me that enjoys holidays all the more for that.

So, here I am heading off on a 10-day trip to Buenos Aires and feeling guilty that I’m not going to be doing anything worthwhile while I’m there.

There’ll be no marathon running; no spending of quality time with my husband. I’m sure by the time I land the guilt will have dissipated. I’m travelling with some wonderful old mates and I’m certain I’ll have a few new mates by the time the trip is over.

I’ll be the best cheerleader ever for those who are running. I’ll find a way to make myself useful. And with the free time I’ll have not running the marathon, I’ll spend it counting my blessings.